A site where a man with far too much interest in beer gets to write about it.

Monday, 24 April 2017

A craft beer conundrum

There's a right lot of idealistic twaddle written about craft beer. I've been trying to get together a post about the need for a proper materialist analysis but it's been hard work so it may never appear.

Not having got my thought fully in order I was unsure what line to take on the craft beer conundrum I spied on a recent visit to Tescos. What am I to make of Adnams dry hopped lager going for 96p a can?

Is it:

An abomination that Tescos are devaluing craft beer by selling it cheaply?

An abomination that Adnams, a company that makes cask bitter, is devaluing craft beer by selling beer in small cans that cheaply?

A bargain.

Help bring about a better understanding of craft beer by voting in my handy poll.

I see business. For Tesco that beer is just another product on their shelves that they believe enough people will want to buy. For Adnams, well, I'm sure they have a good reason to do business with Tesco, perhaps the hope of reaching a wider audience. For shoppers it's a bargain. Geeks, they can complain, shake their fists at the sky, if that will make them feel better, but they don't have to shop at Tesco, they can go to an off-licence and buy something maybe better and certainly more expensive, if they want.

That's not always the case with the bargain prices at supermarkets. They're often a gimmick to bring people in. Chances are that it had been agreed beforehand with the brewery, who, of course, are the ones bearing the costs.

I once read about a case between Tesco an Argentine wine. The original price of the wine was, say, £10 and it was selling well at the price. Tesco, however, decided to promote it with a lower price, but the winemaker didn't agree with the conditions. They put the wine in the bottom shelf and never stocked it again. Supermarket chains are famous cunts in that sense.

I think some of the major supermarkets got rather carried away with expanding their craft ranges and ended up saddled with a lot of stuff, especially the "ersatz craft" from established brewers, that didn't sell. Wychwood King Star lager was another one.

Adnams are one of the most aggressive family brewers when it comes to pseudo-craft which includes pricing. I suspect this is one such deal where they promised Tesco a great price based on a certain volume and that deal has fallen through, meaning that Tesco is now going through the motions of selling it.

I use "pseudo-craft" for any traditional cask brewer that uses radically different branding for its hoppy stuff. I guess at least the East Anglians leave their name visible (qv GK East Coast IPA) but you have to look hard to realise that eg Whitstable Bay has anything to do with Sheps, or Beardo & Mojo with Robbies.

Although it tends to be the traditional regional brewers that do it, it's not just a question of size - Mordue would still be considered a traditional microbrewery (and have won CBOB to boot), but now have a craft line called the Panda Frog Project which seems to have been created on a Pinterest board of all the worst excesses of "craft" branding.

Some of the beer can be really enjoyable - Adnams Ease Up for instance - but it's the pretending to be something that they're not is what earns the "pseudocraft" label for me.

I've heard rumours of Adnams being aggressive on cask pricing too, but not had any direct evidence.

The head brewer a Mordue is a mate of mine and Panda and Frog was the name he used for his homebrew - I may even still have a bottle in my stocks complete with a home made label. I don't know much about what they've done with the commercial version though, but I can feel a post about craft sub-brands coming on.

Fair enough you complain about idealism - but you seem incapable of making point in your retort? I hope your materialist analysis does appear and I look forward to hearing from the retailers, breweries and wholesalers that you gather your information from too.

As I said I'd really like to get my thoughts properly ordered before going off on one. As to my materialist analysis ever appearing I suspect it will depend on if I ever find myself at a loose end with nothing better to do. I had been thinking of what other beer geeks say but I like your idea of contacting other breweries, that could be entertaining: "Dear Brewdog/Stone do you believe a word of the nonsense you spout?".

I saw yesterday that someone's posted something on October that's heading in the direction I was thinking of, though obviously I reject the pseudo-science of dialectical materialism:

We're a chill Carribean ban and eatery only 20 feet from the sea with cool mixed drinks, custom made pizza and wonderful barkeeps. Here are possibilities for taste the nourishment, pizza, fun, nightlife, drinks, bar, late night, late sustenance, cold beer and burgers.